


Human (n.)

by Melospiza_melodia



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Gen, Jake Sisko POV, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, because Star Trek, simultaneously post-canon and pre-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23739736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melospiza_melodia/pseuds/Melospiza_melodia
Summary: When Jake Sisko hears of the Artifact, he knows he’s found a story that he must tell.  But “must” and “can” are two different words…Minor spoilers for ST: Picard and Deep Space 9.
Comments: 21
Kudos: 46





	Human (n.)

“Mr. Sisko, welcome to the Artifact.”

As the transporter hum evaporated from his skin, Jake cracked his eyes open. He was greeted by a shorter man with pale skin and kind eyes.

The description wrote itself into Jake’s brain, and he hated it. No—he welcomed it. He—

He took the outstretched hand of the Reclamation Project Director and shook it. “Thank you for having me.” His voice sounded far away. The air in the Cube seemed to eat it up.

“It wasn’t easy, getting the Romulans to agree to this. Apparently, they view journalists merely as more indiscreet liars.” The Director guided him along a thin bridgeway. Was Jake imagining it, or did his voice sound oddly...mechanical?

“Well, as a journalist for the _Federation Bugle_ , I assure you, Director: I’m only here to write the truth.”

“I’m pleased to hear that,” the Director smiled at him, making the scars around his left eye crinkle. Making the stubs of implants shift slightly, as if awakening. “You have no idea how hard it is to get information out about the XBs. About our cause.”

“XBs?” Jake pulled out a PADD.

“Ex-Borg,” the Director said.

He led Jake through hallways serpentine yet stiff. Cold. A snake in rigor mortis. The lights strobed, blurring out Jake’s vision. The lights. It was just the lights. Of course.

The Director led him to a larger room lit with sterile white light—steady. The light was unflinching as it ran over the bodies, affording no privacy—bleached flesh half-melted over nanofiber eyes, iron-shod cheekbones. Worse were the gaps—the yawning sockets flickering blood. The joints holding nothing but the stagnant air, heavy with disinfectant. Somewhere, the Director was talking. Somewhere, Jake’s fingers were taking notes on the PADD, his mouth was asking questions. Time was as hollow and vacuum-rich as space. Somewhere, he heard a lullaby. Crying. The roar of fire. A voice. A voice he’d almost forgotten, emerging from his own—

Somewhere, a warm hand took his elbow and gently guided him back to the hallway.

“It takes people like that, sometimes,” a soft voice said. “Can you walk?”

A nod.

A few steps or maybe a few lightyears later, a door slid open. The air here smelled of lavender and a trace of—was that curry? The room spun.

Jake collapsed into the proffered chair. The Director sat opposite him, clearing the desk between. A half-finished bowl of curry was put into the replicator in the office’s wall. It was replaced by a steaming cup of tea, which landed with a click in front of him.

Jake breathed deeply, body awakening but mind still numb. The tea was jasmine.

His mother had loved jasmine.

_How the hell did the bastard know that?_

The Director was watching him carefully. To get the eyes—those damned, mismatched eyes ( _what right had they to look_ **_kind_** )—off of him, Jake drank the proffered tea. It coursed like a scream down his throat. He tasted nothing.

The cup rattled as it hit the table.

“It takes people like that, sometimes,” the Director repeated. “It must be hard, for those who’ve never seen a Borg—”

Jake didn’t make a sound. The half-laugh, half scream was born midair on its own. His hands, now empty of cup and PADD, found the table. His body half-stood. “Never seen—-! How _dare_ you! How dare you assume there’s someone untouched by this! Someone that wasn’t there!”

The Director froze.

Somewhere, a voice said, nearly inaudibly, “Were you there, Third of Five? Did you fight Wolf 359?”

The silence consumed him.

Somewhere, another voice answered. It had a metallic hollowness that wasn’t there before. It felt...lonely. 

“I don’t know. XBs...most of us cannot clearly remember our time in the Collective. Just—faces. Names. Places. All in our subconscious, springing up unasked for when triggered. Or when not. But your own name, your own face—it is never there. Only the Collective.”

A deep shuddering breath. “To belay your next question—I don’t know how many I assimilated. How many I killed. I remember—new voices joining. I remember the flow becoming deeper, richer. In my dreams, sometimes I look for the faces. I call. I never see them. Never find a mirror. I wish I did.”

Jake blinked hard. For the first time since he beamed in, he looked the Director square in the eye. He half-wanted—feared?—to see anger there. Hate. Instead, he saw that Hugh was crying, his eyes distant as if he were in the room alone. With difficulty, the XB looked back at him.

Jake held his gaze. It weighed more than the entire Alpha Quadrant, more than the beams he’d dragged away while looking for his mother’s body. He held it.

Hugh broke the silence first. 

“Forgive me, but I must know. If you feel this way about my people, why did you agree to come here, to seek us out?” As Hugh spoke, his voice grew steady and hard. Immovable. Jake recognized the tone. It was the one his dad used when someone threatened his crew.

Jake licked his lips. “Because a wrong happened here that no one has heard of. Because I’m a journalist, and that’s a kind of discoverer. Because—because I need to know—”

His gaze dropped. It was too heavy. It was all too heavy. “Because I need to know if the people who killed my mother were human.”

“Are we human, Jake Sisko?”

Desperate to avoid Hugh’s eyes, Jake stared around the room. The rest of the Borg Cube was spotless, industrial. Here, someone had added a painting of a lionfish to the wall. On the desk, where his dad kept a baseball, Hugh had a picture frame. A stack of letters, hand-written. Pages of notes, with doodled asteroids in the margins. One page had fallen when Jake had stood up.

In his mind, he saw the half-molded faces slowly smiling, as if their muscles had forgotten how to. He saw the gaping limbs, so like the one Nog had come home with after the war. He saw the hulking Cube, its hard angles, and how it reminded him him of the gray arches of Deep Space 9.

He heard his father’s voice. _After the Occupation, some Bajorans had been told for so long that they were broken machines that they forgot they were people._ He’d been talking about the ore-processing plant the station had once been, how each Bajoran had been demeaned to no more than a cog in a wheel.

Kira’s voice rose. _When I see the scales on her face, sometimes I want to hate her. Hate what she was born from. What happened to—to so many of us. What they’d done. I can’t. Sometimes, I wish I could._

And he saw Kira’s face—fragmented in his vision by cackling lightning, a pulse jerking his limbs into action. Demanding that he kill her. Fry alive a woman who’d become like an aunt to him. A compulsion so deep it stared at his father and saw nothing but petty flesh—

Bile rose in Jake’s throat. He could taste the jasmine now, and it was trying to crawl out his nose. 

“You’re human. Oh fuck—you’re human.”

A broken laugh rose from him. “Human, Vulcan, Bajoran, Romulan, Klingon, Borg—hell, it didn’t matter.” Jake shook his head. “It never fucking did.”

_It never could bring her back._

“I’m—I’m sorry, Hugh.”

Hugh considered him for a long moment. “Apology accepted. Drink the tea. It will help.”

Jake wiped his eyes, sipping his tea until his throat felt like his own again. Then, carefully, he slid his PADD across the table.

“What’s this for?” Hugh picked it up.

“I—” Jake paused. “I can’t in good conscience write this piece.”

Hugh’s eyebrows shot up and he dropped the PADD. Jake plunged forward.

“Hugh, since I’ve come onto the Artifact you’ve shown me nothing but kindness. You showed me the Reclamation, an intimate process I had no right to see. You comforted me after I collapsed.” Jake shook his head. “And how do I repay you? I deadname you and accuse you of murder and genocide. I’m your guest, and if my mother were alive to see me now she’d be ashamed. Angry. Hell, I haven’t even thanked you for the tea!”

“At least you noticed,” Hugh said drily.

“That’s not good enough! Hugh—how can you, after all of that, possibly trust me to speak for your people? I give you my notes—find a better-suited journalist. One who can do this justice.”

“There is no better-suited journalist!” Hugh exclaimed. “Don’t you see?”

Jake’s mouth dropped open.

Hugh laughed in disbelief. “Did you really think the Romulans—or I—would let you in without a background check? I knew you had some history, some trauma with the Borg...although I never guessed the extent.”

Hugh ran a hand through his hair, suddenly sober. “If I’d known you’d been present at Wolf—I never would’ve asked this of you. I never would have placed that burden on your shoulders. All I knew is that your family had a history with Picard—with Locutus—and that if you, who had lost so much, could speak for us...the galaxy would listen.

“Forgive me, Jake. I was selfish. I was so preoccupied with my people’s trauma I forgot to see your own. Of course, if this story is too close to home...I will respect your wishes.”

Hugh bowed his head, staring down at the PADD resting between his hands.

“You—you still trust me with this?” Jake asked, aghast.

“I’ve read your other work. On the Dominion War. On the lasting impacts of the Occupation. On humanity’s history of slavery. Even advocating for Federation aid to Cardassia! For reopening the Vorta’s cloning facilities, just to avoid a genocide!” Hugh’s downcast eyes blazed, and he shook his head in disbelief. In awe, Jake realized with a start. “I haven’t seen spirit like that since I met the crew of the _Enterprise._ ”

Without thinking, Jake walked around the table and gently grasped Hugh’s shoulders until the XB looked up. Then, he picked up the PADD. “I will write the story,” he said. “Although, I—Hugh, I’m sorry, but I can’t guarantee anyone will listen. The Vorta cloning facilities are still closed.”

Hugh smiled, laying a hand on his wrist. His voice was warm, but laced with iron. “Write the story, Mr. Sisko. So that one day, when they are ready, people may read it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you wish to comment, please mark any and all spoilers for DS9 and Picard, as this is a crossover fic. Thanks again!


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